No, she could not think about that. She had to keep her thoughts from straying there especially now, when her life once again hung in the balance.
An osprey shot across the bow of the boat, then doubled back past the creaking mast, and as her eyes followed it, she saw a flickering glow a torch as tall as a tree burning on the cliffs ahead.
And then, squinting hard, she saw another.
Her heart rose in her chest.
There was a scraping sound as the surf dragged the bottom of the boat across a bed of sharp rocks and shells. She loosened her grip on the rope, and the sail swung wide, snapping as loud as a gunshot. She clung to the tiller with her frozen hands as the boat bumped and spun onto the wet sand and gravel, lodging there as the tide surged back out again.
She could barely move, but she knew that if she hesitated, the next wave could come in and pull her back out to sea again. Now, before her last ounce of strength abandoned her, she had to force herself to clamber to the front of the boat and step onto the island.
She got up unsteadily her left foot as numb as a post and struggled over the thwarts, the boat pitching and groaning beneath her. She thought she heard a bell clanging, a deep booming sound that reverberated off the rocks and trees. Touching the place on her breast where the cross rested, she murmured a prayer of thanks to St. Peter for delivering her from evil.
And then, nearly toppling over, she stepped into the water which quickly rose above the tops of her boots and staggered onto the beach. Her feet slipped and stumbled on the wet stones, but she crawled a few yards up the sand before allowing herself to fall to her knees. Her head was bowed, as if awaiting the blow of an axe, and her breath came only in ragged gasps. All she could hear was the ice crackling in her hair. But she was alive, and that was what mattered. She had survived the trek over the frozen tundra, the journey across the open sea and the horrors of the house with the whitewashed windows. She had made it to a new continent, and as she peered down the beach, she could see dark shapes in the twilight, running toward her.
Yes, they were coming, to rescue her. Sergei had spoken the truth.
If shed had the strength, shed have called out to them, or waved an arm.
But her limbs had no feeling left in them, and her teeth were chattering in her skull.
The figures were coming so fast, and running so low, she could hardly believe her eyes.
And then she felt an even greater chill clutch at her heart, as she realized what the running shapes really were.
She whipped around toward the boat again, but it had already been dislodged and was disappearing into the fog.
Had she come so far for this?
But she was too exhausted, too paralyzed with cold and despair, even to try to save herself.
She stared in terror down the beach as, shoulders heaving and eyes blazing orange in the dusk, the pack of ravening black wolves galloped toward her across the rocks and sand.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Slater knew what he looked like, and he knew why Sergeant Groves was asking. He had taken a fistful of pills that morning, but the fever was back. He put out a hand to steady himself, then yanked it back off the hood of the jeep. The metal was as hot as a stove.
Ill survive, he said, rubbing the tips of his fingers against his camo pants. That morning, he had visited the Marine barracks and watched as two more men had been airlifted out, both of them at deaths door; he wasnt sure theyd make it. Despite all the normal precautions, the malaria,
which hed contracted himself a year before on a mission to Darfur, had decimated this camp. As a U.S. Army doctor and field epidemiologist, Major Frank Slater had been dispatched to figure out what else could be done and fast.
The rice paddies he was looking at now were a prime breeding ground for the deadly mosquitoes, and the base had been built not only too close by, but directly downwind. At night, when they liked to feed, swarms of insects lifted off the paddies and descended en masse on the barracks and the canteen and the guard towers. Once, in the Euphrates Valley, Slater had seen a cloud of bugs rising so thick and high in the sky that hed mistaken it for an oncoming storm.
So, which way do you want to go with this? Sergeant Groves asked. An African-American as tough and uncompromising as the Cleveland streets that he hailed fromby the time I left, all we were making there was icicles, hed once told Slater he always spoke with purpose and brevity. Spray the swamp or move the base?
Slater was debating that very thing when he was distracted by a pair of travelers a young girl, maybe nine or ten, and her father slogging through the paddy with an overburdened mule. Nearly everyone in Afghanistan had been exposed to malaria it was as common as the flu in the rest of the world and over the generations they had either died or developed a rudimentary immunity. They often got sick, but they had learned to live with it.